Prototype

Last year, Robert Palm at Classic Factory celebrated the 50th anniversary of arguably the most beautiful car ever made, the Jaguar E-type, by designing the retro-grade Vizualtech Growler E concept. The Growler reportedly was created under the commission of an anonymous Swiss businessman, but now an announcement sees the car perhaps headed for production, albeit with some tweaks and a new name: Lyonheart K.

The Lyonheart K has been redesigned slightly to look more aggressive and less overtly retro. The quad oval headlights (which tipped a hat to the original E’s pair of oval lamps) are gone, replaced by sleek, one-piece units, and the vents behind the front wheels have thicker, more dramatic strakes.

The car still will be based on the Jaguar XKR and powered by a tuned version of that car’s 5.0-liter supercharged V-8 making 550 hp and 502 lb-ft of torque. (The horsepower figure is down from the Growler’s original claim of 600.) Those output figures are identical to those of the XKR-S; if Lyonheart doesn’t buy pre-prepped engines, it appears it will at least adopt the XKR-S’s ECU programming. The Lyonheart also is said to weigh substantially less than the non-S XKR, so the real-world K should be quick, too; Lyonheart claims it will sprint to 60 in just 3.7 seconds and top out at 186 mph. The latter figure matches the XKR-S’s terminal velocity.

The interior will be unique to the Lyonheart, with only a few hidden parts said to be plucked from the Jaguar parts bin. Robert Palm justifies the K’s $660,000 price tag by promising hyper-exclusivity—just 50 hand-built units are planned—and build quality that meets or exceeds that seen from Bentley and Rolls-Royce.